The Circus - 5 July

In the blink of a young girl's eye

So it is off-season. EURO 12 is over, Sepp Blatter is asleep in his coffin. What is an online football column to ponder?

Perhaps The Circus could reflect on the highs of Harry Kewell's career at Melbourne Victory... well, that's over. What else?

Fortunately, this is the time of year footballers take their opportunity to make grabs for even more ridiculous wads of cash than what they are already receiving.

Case in point is soon to be former Arsenal captain Robin van Persie, who eloquently explained he is leaving the club due to a desire to restore it to its "glory days".

Sounds counter-intuitive until Van Persie explains that, when it comes to "glory days", he and Arsene Wegner's are not singing from the same Bruce Springsteen song book.

"It has again become clear to me that we in many aspects disagree on the way Arsenal FC should move forward", Van Persie said.

So not only does he want to get paid handsomely by the club, he wants to run it too; an opportunity sure to come his way at Manchester City.

As simple as A-V-B

Hoffenheim midfielder Gylfi Sigurdsson has been presented a choice between Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool. Both established EPL clubs, both with new managers for the next season, both promising to remunerate his brains out.

Sigurdsson chose Spurs and new main man Andre Villas-Boas, presumably because he is not Brendan Rogers, Swansea's ex-manager who is off to Liverpool.

What does Swansea have to do with it? That's where Sigurdsson was on loan to from Hoffenheim and who the Icelandic international had also agreed to terms with before his on-loan-now-former-manager went to one of the clubs bidding for him in the first place.

And now that they've found the 'god particle', (which is not Lionel Messi, by the way) CERN will be putting its particle accelerator into working out exatly what all that means.

Changing stripes

Southampton courted controversy, unveiling a new kit that flouts tradition by having no stripes... which makes The Circus wonder what the vertical lines on the shirt are.

Another unwanted consequence of wearing the kit is that it makes you look like an absolute dill.

Life's a beach

Who said coastal folk are more relaxed?

Spoken word

"Respect for Italia" – Captain of Spain Iker Casillas calling for an early end to the EURO 12 final out of respect for the opponent.

Casillas has won plaudits for his behaviour but The Circus, being the being the ornery type, sees it a bit differently.

If Spain was beating up on a country The Circus was affiliated with, let's call it 'Stralya' for argument's sake, and Casillas started banging on about calling things off out of "respect", The Circus would be apt to find the whole thing a trifle condescending.